Mommy 2.0

Hey! I’ve been lost in some treadmilly fog of trying to get things done in the past week. The halloween candy combination of the time change, the realities of the kids in school, and the husband being home from tour have all been building up. While it’s so great to have him home, he looks at me weird when I spend more then 6 hours in a row in front of the laptop. He’ll say, “What are you DOING?”

And I’m all, “Oh, first I called Barack Obama’s headquarters, you know to try to get tickets to the inaugural ball, and then there are these crafters in St. Louis I was checking out, then I had to read the BBC, then it was time for Gawker, then I Tweeted for a little bit- then, there was like this really funny Facebook status- OMG, I’ll email it to you..and that Ralph Nader? Is a piece of work…” By this time, my head is deep back in the laptop screen, collecting bits of information that may or not ever prove any use.

Him: “I’M RIGHT HERE. You don’t need to e-mail me.”

Me: “Oh. Right.”

It’s a strange world, this virtual connection to many people that I may or may not meet in real life. Actually, the more people I meet off-screen that I first knew virtually, the more I recognize and appreciate the authenticity of these connections, the work people do in putting parts of themselves out there to share with the universe.

It reminds me of how, as writers, we’re always being told “Show, don’t tell.” For example, it’s much better to say “2 lonely crumbs stared dolefully from the bottom of the box, reminding her of her folly.” Then, “Susie hated it when she ate too much.”

When fellow bloggers and tweeters take a virtual slice out of their life and put it forth, I sometimes think I learn more in 140 characters or less than I would if I came and slept on your floor and spent a few days with you. There’s a suspension of the usual formalities, an assumption that we must all be somewhat on the same page or we wouldn’t have found each other.

Mostly it’s right, sometimes it turns into Twitteruptions as seen the past few days as Election tensions ran high, and people realized maybe they weren’t all for the same guy. But I’ve been impressed by the level of civil discourse, and gratified by how much I learn every day from you guys. I used to read 2 newspapers a day avidly, now I go to Twitter to see what’s what. I don’t feel less informed either, oddly. When I read newspapers, I tended to get really sucked into the awful stories of what people are capable of doing to each other. When I’m really engaged in Social Media, I tend to be awed by how much we all do for each other.

What about you? How has life in the Blogosphere changed your information acquisition, and what kind of authenticity engages you?